V. I. Lenin

The Tasks Of The Working Women’s Movement In The Soviet Republic

Speech DeliveredAt The Fourth Moscow City Conference Of Non-Party Working Women

Delivered:23 September, 1919First Published:Pravda No. 213,September25, 1919; Published according to the text of the pamphlet, V. I. Lenin,Speech at the Working Women’s Congress,Moscow, 1919, verified with thePravdatextSource:Lenin’sCollected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 30, pages 40-46Translated:George HannaTranscription/HTML Markup:David Walters & Robert CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License

Comrades, it gives me pleasure to greet a
    conference of working women. I will allow myself to pass over
    those subjects and questions that, of course, at the moment are
    the cause of the greatest concern to every working woman and to
    every politically-conscious individual from among the working
    people; these are the most urgent questions—that of bread
    and that of the war situation. I know from the newspaper reports
    of your meetings that these questions have been dealt with
    exhaustively by Comrade Trotsky as far as war questions are
    concerned and by Comrades Yakovleva and Svidersky as far as the
    bread question is concerned; please, therefore, allow me to pass
    over those questions.

I should like to say a few words about the general tasks facing
    the working women’s movement in the Soviet Republic, those
    that are, in general, connected with the transition to socialism,
    and those that are of particular urgency at the present
    time. Comrades, the question of the position of women was raised
    by Soviet power from the very beginning. It seems to me that any
    workers’ state in the course of transition to socialism is
    laced with a double task. The first part of that task is
    relatively simple and easy. It concerns those old laws that kept
    women in a position of inequality as compared to men.

Participants in all emancipation movements in Western Europe
    have long since, not for decades but for centuries, put forward
    the demand that obsolete laws be annulled and women and men be
    made equal by law, but none of the democratic European states,
    none of the most advanced republics have succeeded in putting it
    into effect, because wherever there is capitalism, wherever there
    is private property in land and factories, wherever the power of
    capital is preserved, the men retain their privileges. It was
    possible to put it into effect in Russia only because the power of
    the workers has been established here since October 25, 1917. From
    its very inception Soviet power set out to be the power of the
    working people, hostile to all forms of exploitation. It set
    itself the task of doing away with the possibility of the
    exploitation of the working people by the landowners and
    capitalists, of doing away with the rule of capital. Soviet power
    has been trying to make it possible for the working people to
    organise their lives without private property in land, without
    privately-owned factories, without that private property that
    everywhere, throughout the world, even where there is complete
    political liberty, even in the most democratic republics, keeps
    the working people in a state of what is actually poverty and
    wage-slavery, and women in a state of double slavery.

Soviet power, the power of the working people, in the first
    months of its existence effected a very definite revolution in
    legislation that concerns women. Nothing whatever is left in the
    Soviet Republic of those laws that put women in a subordinate
    position. I am speaking specifically of those laws that took
    advantage of the weaker position of women and put them in a
    position of inequality and often, even, in a humiliating position,
    i.e., the laws on divorce and on children born out of wedlock and
    on the right of a woman to summon the father of a child for
    maintenance.

It is particularly in this sphere that bourgeois legislation,
    even, it must be said, in the most advanced countries, takes
    advantage of the weaker position of women to humiliate them and
    give them a status of inequality. It is particularly in this
    sphere that Soviet power has left nothing whatever of the old,
    unjust laws that were intolerable for working people. We may now
    say proudly and without any exaggeration that apart from Soviet
    Russia there is not a country in the world where women enjoy full
    equality and where women are not placed in the humiliating
    position felt particularly in day-to-day family life. This was one
    of our first and most important tasks.

If you have occasion to come into contact with parties that are
    hostile to the Bolsheviks, if there should come into your hands
    newspapers published in Russian in the regions occupied by Koichak
    or Denikin, or if you happen to talk to people who share the views
    of those newspapers, you may often hear from them the accusation
    that Soviet power has violated democracy.

We, the representatives of Soviet power, Bolshevik Communists
    and supporters of Soviet power are often accused of violating
    democracy and proof of this is given by citing the fact that
    Soviet power dispersed the Constituent Assembly. We usually answer
    this accusation as follows; that democracy and that Constituent
    Assembly which came into being when private property still existed
    on earth, when there was no equality between people, when the one
    who possessed his own capital was the boss and the others worked
    for him and were his wage-slaves-that was a democracy on which we
    place no value. Such democracy concealed slavery even in the most
    advanced countries. We socialists are supporters of democracy only
    insofar as it eases the position of the working and oppressed
    people. Throughout the world socialism has set itself the task of
    combating every kind of exploitation of man by man. That democracy
    has real value for us winch serves the exploited, the
    underprivileged. If those who do not work are disfranchised that
    would be real equality between people. Those who do not work
    should not eat.

In reply to these accusations we say that the question must be
    presented in this way—how is democracy implemented in
    various countries? We see that equality is proclaimed in all
    democratic republics but in the civil laws and in laws on the
    rights of women—those that concern their position in the
    family and divorce—we see inequality and the humiliation of
    women at every step, and we say that this is a violation of
    democracy specifically in respect of the oppressed. Soviet power
    has implemented democracy to a greater degree than any of the
    other, most advanced countries because it has not left in its laws
    any trace of the inequality of women.

    Again I say that no other state and no other legislation has
    ever done for women a half of what Soviet power did in the first
    months of its existence.

Laws alone, of course, are not enough, and we are by no means
    content with mere decrees. In the sphere of legislation, however,
    we have done everything required of us to put women in a position
    of equality and we have every right to be proud of it. The
    position of women in Soviet Russia is now ideal as compared with
    their position in the most advanced states. We tell ourselves,
    however, that this is, of course, only the beginning.

Owing to her work in the house, the woman is still in a
    difficult position. To effect her complete emancipation and make
    her the equal of the man it is necessary for the national economy
    to be socialised and for women to participate in common productive
    labour. Then women will occupy the same position as men.

Here we are not, of course, speaking of making women the equal
    of men as far as productivity of labour, the quantity of labour,
    the length of the working day, labour conditions, etc., are
    concerned; we mean that the woman should not, unlike the man, be
    oppressed because of her position in the family. You all know that
    even when women have full rights, they still remain factually
    downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases
    housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the
    most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and
    does not include anything that would in any way promote the
    development of the woman.

In pursuance of the socialist ideal we want to struggle for the
    full implementation of socialism, and here an extensive field of
    labour opens up before women. We are now making serious
    preparations to clear the ground for the building of socialism,
    but the building of socialism will begin only when we have
    achieved the complete equality of women and when we undertake the
    new work together with women who have been ’emancipated from
    that petty, stultifying, unproductive work. This is a job that
    will take us many, many years.

This work cannot show any rapid results and will not produce a
    scintillating effect.

We are setting up model institutions, dining-rooms and
    nurseries, that will emancipate women from housework. And the work
    of organising all these institutions will fall mainly to women. It
    has to be admitted that in Russia today there are very few
    institutions that would help woman out of her state of household
    slavery. There is an insignificant number of them, and the
    conditions now obtaining in the Soviet Republic—the war and
    food situation about which comrades have already given you the
    details—hinder us in this work. Still, it must be said that
    these institutions that liberate women from their position as
    household slaves are springing up wherever it is in any way
    possible.

We say that the emancipation of the workers must be effected by
    the workers themselves, and in exactly the same way the
    emancipation of working women is a matter for the working women
    themselves. The working women must themselves see to it that such
    institutions are developed, and this activity will bring about a
    complete change in their position as compared with what it was
    under the old, capitalist society.

In order to be active in politics under the old, capitalist
    regime special training was required, so that women played an
    insignificant part in politics, even in the most advanced and free
    capitalist countries. Our task is to make politics available to
    every working woman. Ever since private property in laud and
    factories has been abolished and the power of the landowners and
    capitalists overthrown, the tasks of politics have become simple,
    clear and comprehensible to the working people as a whole,
    including working women. In capitalist society the woman’s
    position is marked by such inequality that the extent of her
    participation in politics is only an insignificant fraction of
    that of the man. The power of the working people is necessary for
    a change to be wrought in this situation, for then the main tasks
    of politics will consist of matters directly affecting the fate of
    the working people themselves.

Here, too, the participation of working women is essential
    —not only of party members and politically-conscious women,
    but also of the non-party women and those who are least
    politically conscious. Here Soviet power opens up a wide field of
    activity to working women.

We have had a difficult time in the struggle against the forces
    hostile to Soviet Russia that have attacked her. It was difficult
    for us to fight on the battlefield against the forces who went to
    war against the power of the working people and in the field of
    food supplies against the profiteers, because of the too small
    number of people, working people, who came whole-heartedly to our
    aid with their own labour. Here, too, there is nothing Soviet
    power can appreciate as much as the help given by masses of
    non-party working women. They may know that in the old, bourgeois
    society, perhaps, a comprehensive training was necessary for
    participation in politics and that this was not available to
    women. The political activity of the Soviet Republic is mainly the
    struggle against the landowners and capitalists, the struggle for
    the elimination of exploitation; political activity, therefore, is
    made available to the working woman in the Soviet Republic and it
    will consist in the working woman using her organisational ability
    to help the working man.

What we need is not only organisational work on a scale
    involving millions; we need organisational work on the smallest
    scale and this makes it possible for women to work as well. Women
    can work under war conditions when it is a question of helping the
    army or carrying on agitation in the army. Women should take an
    active part in all this so that the Red Army sees that it is being
    looked after, that solicitude is being displayed. Women can also
    work in the sphere of food distribution, on the improvement of
    public catering and everywhere opening dining-rooms like those
    that are so numerous in Petrograd.

It is in these fields that the activities of working women
    acquire the greatest organisational significance. The
    participation of working women is also essential in the
    organisation and running of big experimental farms and should not
    take place only in isolated cases. This i5 something that cannot
    be carried out without the participation of a large number of
    working women. Working women will be very useful in this field in
    supervising the distribution of food and in making food products
    more easily obtainable. This work can well be done by non-party
    working women and its accomplishment will do more than anything
    else to strengthen socialist society.

We have abolished private property in land and almost
    completely abolished the private ownership of factories; Soviet
    power is now trying to ensure that all working people, non-party
    as well as Party members, women as well as men, should take part
    in this economic development. The work that Soviet power has begun
    can only make progress when, instead of a few hundreds, millions
    and millions of women throughout Russia take part in it. We are
    sure that the cause of socialist development will then become
    sound. Then the working people will show that they can live and
    run their country without the aid of the landowners and
    capitalists. Then socialist construction will be so soundly based
    in Russia that no external enemies in other countries and none
    inside Russia will be any danger to the Soviet Republic.